


The Storm and the Dead

by DrabblingSparks (ingenious_spark)



Series: Saint Seiya prompts & short fic [186]
Category: Saint Seiya
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe, Character Study, Death, Drabble, Gen, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, Prompt Fic, Purgatory, Souls, Wingfic, dead bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 23:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18679567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingenious_spark/pseuds/DrabblingSparks
Summary: Aiacos is a caretaker, a shepherd of souls. It's tiring work, in the eternal rains of the afterlife. Perhaps it's purgatory after all.





	The Storm and the Dead

**Author's Note:**

> From a list of prompts over on my tumblr, [@oopsbirdficced](http://oopsbirdficced.tumblr.com). I am open for prompts currently, and will be closing prompts on Monday, May 6, 2019. [I accept anonymous prompts!](https://oopsbirdficced.tumblr.com/post/184578439744/opening-normalhoroscopes-prompts)
> 
> The prompts are all written by normal_horoscopes over on tumblr! I encourage you to check them out!

_Taurus: A thunderous rain-swept plain. The dead are placed in covered towers to keep the storms off. Thunder signals a soul crossing over._

Aiacos spits rain from his mouth, wiping an arm across his face. A growl of thunder splits the air, and he glances up automatically, relieved. One more soul gone. One less body to worry about. He ducks into a tower, shaking his feathers out, raining droplets in the entryway. He hadn’t seen which particular tower lightning had struck, so he’ll have to look.

The rows of the dead are always a sobering sight, but he’s lucked out- one blanket lies flat on the floor, lacking the body that had been under it. He picks it up and shakes it out, sliding it into his bag.

Aiacos has been here for a long time, tending the dead in this forgotten, eternally raining place. He’s not the only one, but they keep to their assigned towers, protecting the dead until their souls are released, and their bodies evaporate into nothingness.

They never decay, unless they’re left out in the storm. They lie as though sleeping, covered with blankets. The storm makes them rot, though, twists the souls into something dark and terrible that hunts the caretakers. They must always patrol for the newly dead. Its strange, that the rain twists them so, when it’s the thunder that releases them, the strike of a lightning bolt on the rod that tops every tower.

He glances back out into the unceasing rain, and sighs. The work of a caretaker is never done, and he must look for more dead. Aiacos is somehow tired, though, this close to taking a break. To tucking his head under his wing and sleeping for a while. Like a bird.

There are no animals here. He doesn’t know what birds are, or how he knows how they sleep. He knows many similar things without knowing how- all the caretakers do. It makes Aiacos wonder, sometimes, if they’re souls too, not mutilated by the rain, but somehow purified by it, until they grow their wings and take up their inborn work.

He tries not to think about it, given the hungry, angry, corrupt souls he’s had to strike down. Leading them up in flight until they reach the iron spire of a tower- and dodging at just the right moment, so that all he escapes with are singed feathers and ringing ears and spotty vision. The corrupt souls, on the other hand scream, thin and eerie as they wink out of existence, borne away into the lightning and thunder and the storm.

Aiacos doesn’t know if the others do it like he does. He’s been called reckless before, so perhaps not.

Aiacos is woolgathering, delaying heading back into the storm, despite the way that caretakers never feel physical exhaustion. He sighs, ruffling his wings again, and sees and hears another soul pass along.

In the brilliant flash of light he sees something pale on the ground nearby through the eternal grey of the rain, and swears softly, pushing past his tiredness to get back to work.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the LLF Comment Project, which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including:
> 
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End file.
